Impact of Fish Farming on Household Income: A Case Study from Mymensingh District

Abstract

Problem statement: Fisheries sector is a rising sector in Bangladesh. Many farmers are shifting their rice fields to ponds for fish farming in the study areas. This transformation of farming raises a question to the researchers whether fish farming has any impact on household income or not. Thus, the researchers took the present study to identify the contribution of fish farming on household income of the fish farmers in the study areas. Approach: The population of the study consisted of all fish farmers of the selected eight villages from four sub-districts of Mymensingh district. Required data for the study were collected with questionnaire through personal interviewing of the respondent farmers. Results: Result shows that fish farming is contributing in a range of 15.35-86.63% on household income of the respondent farmers and the average contribution of fish farming is 50.99% indicating major contribution of this entrepreneurship on household income of the practitioner farmers. The result of the stepwise multiple regression analysis shows that all of the income sources jointly can elucidate 98.3% variation on household income where fish farming alone can contribute the highest (44%) on household income of the respondent farmers. However, the results of multiple regressions indicate that 74% of the variance in the income from fish farming could be explained by the explanatory variables of the study. The study successfully explored following factors: age of the household head, family land holdings, pond size, training on fish farming and access to information on fish farming which can influence income from fish farming. Conclusions/Recommendations: The study reported that fish farming has significant contribution on household income of the practitioner farmers. Thus, it is essential for the policy makers in the field of fisheries to take into account the identified factors for rapid expansion of fish farming in rural Bangladesh.